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Friday, July 20, 2012

Dark Knight shooting and mainstream media response

Immediately following the tragedy in Colorado, ABC's Brian Ross and George Stephanolpoulos tried to pin the violence on the Tea Party:

Stephanolpoulos: I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.

Ross: There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.

It's interesting that Ross and ABC News should think to look to the Tea Party website first -- and to broadcast politically volatile information without verifying if that "Jim Holmes" is the same as the suspect.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media got it wrong...again. And to make it worse, when ABC News corrected its initial report, it tried to blame "social media" and "members of the public":

"An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. Several other local residents with similar names were also contacted via social media by members of the public who mistook them for the suspect."

What do you think? Honest mistake ... Agenda-driven propaganda ... Just bad journalism?

Comments

Immediately following the tragedy in Colorado, ABC's Brian Ross and George Stephanolpoulos tried to pin the violence on the Tea Party:

Stephanolpoulos: I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.

Ross: There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.

It's interesting that Ross and ABC News should think to look to the Tea Party website first -- and to broadcast politically volatile information without verifying if that "Jim Holmes" is the same as the suspect.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media got it wrong...again. And to make it worse, when ABC News corrected its initial report, it tried to blame "social media" and "members of the public":

"An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. Several other local residents with similar names were also contacted via social media by members of the public who mistook them for the suspect."

What do you think? Honest mistake ... Agenda-driven propaganda ... Just bad journalism?